Race and the political ecology of education in Brazil: A spatial analysis of rural school closures

Abstract

Education and processes of agrarian change are deeply imbricated processes. While political ecologists have begun exploring education in earnest, questions of race have remain largely unexplored. In this article, we analyze the spatial linkages between education, race, and the permanence of the peasantry in the face of expanding capital. Our focus is the crisis of rural school closures in Brazil. Over the last twenty five years, the state has closed more than 65% of Brazil’s rural schools. Social movements argue that these school closures are differentially occurring in communities of color. To better understand the factors driving this crisis, we assembled a “big data” database, consisting of twenty five years of municipal school records from every school in Brazil. Drawing upon advanced geospatial statistics and multiple linear regression techniques, we analyze both how these school closures are spatially patterned throughout Brazil, and the social, political, and economic factors shaping this crisis. Our results highlight land concentration and race as central dynamics in this crisis, underscoring the enduring impact that racial oppression and historical patterns of land inequality play in structuring the politics of knowledge and educational landscape in Brazil.

Keywords

• Brazil
• social movements
• race
• spatial analysis
• educação do campo
• GIS